Arts and Literature
- Deanne Bell (BS 2002): host of Discovery Channel's Smash Lab and PBS's Design Squad
- Kristin Bauer van Straten: television actress on True Blood
- Morris Carnovsky (AB): stage and film actor
- Larry Cuba (AB 1972): animator
- Robert Culp (attended): television actor
- Anita Diamant (AB 1973): novelist
- Richard Eastham (studied prior to World War II): actor
- George Pearse Ennis: painter and watercolorist
- Jon Feltheimer (AB 1972): CEO of Lionsgate Films
- Tom Friedman (BFA 1988) : Conceptual sculptor
- Bernard Fuchs (MFA 1954): painter and illustrator
- John Gardner (AB 1955): novelist
- Dave Garroway (AB 1936): Today Show host
- Elizabeth Graver (MFA 1999): novelist
- Robert Guillaume: stage and television actor
- Henry Hampton (AB 1961): filmmaker; producer of PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize
- A. E. Hotchner (AB 1940, JD 1940): biographer and novelist (Papa Hemingway, King of the Hill)
- Fannie Hurst (AB 1909): writer and social activist
- Josephine Winslow Johnson (student 1926-1931): Pulitzer Prize-winning author
- Stan Kann (AB 1946): theater organist
- Johnny Kastl (AB, 1997): television actor (Scrubs)
- Hank Klibanoff (AB 1971): author and Pulitzer Prize winner
- Caryn Mandabach (AB 1970): Emmy award winning television and film producer of the Cosby Show among others
- Edward Shepherd Mead (AB 1936): playwright ("How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying")
- David Merrick (AB 1934): Broadway producer
- Dan Nadel (AB 1998): Co-founder and editor of arts magazine The Ganzfeld and publisher PictureBox, Inc., 2005 Grammy award winner
- Oliver Nelson (student 1954-1957): jazz musician and composer
- David McCheyne Newell: naturalist, writer
- Frank Nuderscher: American Impressionist painter and muralist
- J. D. Parran (AM 1971): jazz musician
- Dan Piraro: cartoonist of "Bizarro", (attended but dropped out)
- Robert Quine (JD 1968): rock guitarist
- Harold Ramis (AB 1966): film actor, writer and director
- Eugene B. Redmond (MA 1966): poet, critic, civil-rights activist
- Carolyne Roehm (AB 1973): designer
- Irma S. Rombauer (AB): co-author of The Joy of Cooking
- Bryan Rowles (AB 1975) Creative Director, Gold Lion Winner 2008
- Allen Rucker: television writer and novelist
- Peter Sarsgaard (AB 1993): actor
- Steven Sater: Broadway lyricist, playwright, and poet
- Peter Saul (BFA 1956): Painter
- Allan Trautman (AB 1976): Actor, puppeteer
- Jeff Tremaine (AB 1990): director, producer
- Andrew Volpe: Lead singer and rhythm guitarist for rock band Ludo.
- Lauren Weinstein (AB 1998): cartoonist
- Luke Whisnant (MFA 1982): novelist, short story writer
- Mary Wickes (AB 1930): stage and film actress
- Tennessee Williams (student 1936-37): playwright
- Olly Wilson (AB 1959): composer
Read more about this topic: List Of Washington University Alumni
Famous quotes containing the words arts and, arts and/or literature:
“No doubt, to a man of sense, travel offers advantages. As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man. A foreign country is a point of comparison, wherefrom to judge his own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)